Updates and other random Rush stuff

The Take Off, Eh! - Bob and Doug McKenzie Live Reunion fundraiser took place this past Tuesday evening in Toronto. Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas reprised their roles as Bob and Doug McKenzie and recruited SCTV alums Catherine O'Hara, Martin Short, Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty, along with Kids in the Hall stars Scott Thompson, Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley to put on a show for the crowd who paid over $2500 for a ticket with all the funds going to support spinal cord research. Geddy Lee made a surprise appearance towards the end of the show and joined Moranis & Thomas for a rendition of their early '80s smash hit Take Off!. You can watch some fan-filmed video of the performance below or in this Facebook video. There's also a gallery of photos from the event including one of Geddy, and some news coverage from CBC, CP24 and The National Post. Geddy Lee also posted photos of himself with both Dan Akroyd and Paul Shaffer backstage to his official Instagram page.

Canada's 150th birthday took place this past Canada Day on July 1st, and to celebrate the occasion Spotify asked several Canadian artists, including Rush, to talk about Canadian music and to create playlists of their favorite Canadian songs. Rush's Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson give their thoughts on Canadian music in this video interview and share their Canada 150 Spotify playlist. Speaking of the Canada 150 celebration, the Winnipeg Free Press got in on the fun by posting their list of Canada's 150 most important songs and Rush's The Spirit of Radio made the top 10 (thanks RushFanForever):

... The Spirit of Radio was a game-changer for Rush. Although the Toronto power trio will never be mistaken for a singles act à la the Beatles or ABBA, the tune, which clocked in at un-Rush-like 4:57, reached No. 13 on the U.K. Top 40 chart, and was included on a list of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll," according to no less an authority than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.]

Jacob Moon and David Barrett, along with drummer Rob 'Beatdown' Brown performed a free concert of Rush and Rush-inspired music at the Lee Lifeson Art Park this past Wednesday evening. The pair are also recording a version of Rush's Time Stand Still that will be getting mixed by former Rush producer Terry Brown and be made available to those who donated funds to the project via GoFundMe. Several photos and videos from the event are available on Facebook including this gallery and this video of Time Stand Still.

... The opening power chords that share Le Studio space with Geddy Lee's Moog synths and a spaced out backbeat from Peart are not your common or garden no-third power chords as you'd imagine, nor were they anything like the open, up-the-neck chords he'd been using in the previous decade (cf The Hemispheres chord). If they were standard power chords, it would probably just be a big E-major followed by a D and an A and then jumping down to the C. But, Lifeson, who pleads ignorance of most of the chord names in the video tutorial he recorded for the song in 2007, is playing some interesting variations on the power chord idea. In them, an open top E string rings out in the intro on three of four chord variations that give us the progression. ...

Alex Lifeson gets a mention in this Guitar Player article on Dreamcar - the new side project that finds No Doubt's Tom Dumont, Tony Kanal, and Adrian Young teaming up with AFI vocalist Davey Havok. When asked about the album's heavy use of new-wave guitar tones, Dumont had this to say (thanks RushFanForever):

... The guitar sound was this combination of a Kemper Profiler augmented by some pedals plugged into the front end of the amp, and my Fulltone Tube Tape Echo routed through the effects loop. ... Much of the album was also informed by what Alex Lifeson did on Rush's Grace Under Pressure and Signals, where he was playing Strats with a heavy use of delays and choruses to make atmospheric sounds. ...